


While I breathe

by Moonhaze



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Dystopian, I dont really know what to tag tbh, Jongho and yeosang are cousins, Mentions of Suicide, Post-Apocalypse, Protective Jongho, Yeosang is angry at the world, nothing too graphic but yeah
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:33:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23514709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonhaze/pseuds/Moonhaze
Summary: Yeosang doesn’t remember much about his life before the world ended. The world as they knew it. What he remembers seems more like a childish fantasy world, a hopeful dream, compared to the reality they lived in.War ended the world, and biological warfare made it nearly impossible to survive. Yeosang made it out alive thanks to Jongho and his family, but sometimes he wishes he didn’t.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 19





	1. Memories

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfic in ages, and my first for Ateez. It was inspired by this [fanart](https://twitter.com/neburenity/status/1229042150437945352)
> 
> Anyway I hope you like it!
> 
> Warning: Liberal use of the word ‘remember’.

Yeosang doesn’t remember much about his life before the world ended. The world as they knew it. What he remembers seems more like a childish fantasy world, a hopeful dream, compared to the reality they lived in. He remembers playing out in the field behind his house, remembers running barefoot, but he can’t recall the feeling of grass against bare skin. He remembers catching bugs with friends during hot summer days, chasing butterflies with nets, yet the sound of cicadas escape him. It could easily have been memories fabricated by the stories he had been told, by the books he started to consume to combat the boredom of being stuck in one place for far too long. And sometimes he believed they were, even if he at heart knew it not to be true.

He was eight when the war started. Eight years old and scared.

He remembers when he had to move. He remembers being woken up in the middle of the night. Clothes hastily shoved into bags by his parents while he watched on in fearful confusion. Crying. Maybe it was him. Maybe it was his cousin who had spent the night. Yeosang was fairly sure it was him, Jongho had always been the stronger of the two, the braver one. The details of the night remains fuzzy to him, like a movie watched through tearfilled eyes. What he does know for certain, though, is that it was the last time he saw his parents. His last moments with them burnt into his memory forever: their fearful faces they valiantly tried to hide behind smiles. Smiles that looked way too watery and forced to look reassuring. Their long, too hard hugs and whispered promises that they would see him soon. That it was only temporary. All to make him let go of their hands and follow his uncle, Jongho’s dad, to a place where they would be safe. They had to have known that it was a promise they would never be able to keep, but Yeosang had believed them. He was a kid. A kid that believed in his parents. They had never lied to him before.

A few days later the first of _the_ bombs dropped. It marked the beginning of the end.

Yeosang was nine when they taught him how wear a gas mask. Nine years old and terrified.

They had moved from place to place in the beginning, never staying still for too long. He remembers constantly looking towards the horizon for his parents he knew deep down weren’t coming. Gradually losing hope of ever seeing them again, but habitually looking for them at every new stop on their journey.

They never showed. 

Yeosang was at a loss about how much time had passed since he had left home when they reached it. The city. Bombed beyond recognition.. It could’ve been days. It could have been months. He knew he had felt sadness and fear during that time. So much fear. The feelings making his insides twist up everytime he looked back on it. Jongho and Yeosang had been shepherded down a secret tunnel by Jongho’s parents. He remembers being surprised it had survived all the destruction around it. The tunnel had opened up to a large underground structure filled with rooms and hallways, a massive bunker meant to hold a considerable amount of people safe from the war zone above. 

Yeosang was ten when the world officially ended. Ten years old and horrified.

The destruction of the earth had been quick, methodical. The surface turned unlivable. The fall out of the war too heavy for the world to handle, polluting the air with dangerous toxins and poisoning the earth. The Blight, that's what they called it, had gotten out of control. Killing everyone and everything in its path. Trapping them in the bunker for the unseeable future.

His memories for a long time after that were hazy, days bleeding together with their repetitive nature. It had felt like forever and a day. Yeosang didn’t know how long he had held onto the hope of meeting his parents again. How long he had refused to listen to everyone telling him with pitying looks that they were gone, but his hope had been crushed by the announcement of the surface condition. Coming to the realization that his parents weren’t joining them. That they never would keep their promise to him. What little hope he had left had been squashed. He had been crying. He had done it a lot since the war started, but after the news hit he became unconsolable. Crying for days at an end, refusing to leave their designated room. Refusing to eat. When he wasn’t crying he had been numbly staring at the gray cement wall. Not hearing a word anyone said to him. Not giving a single indication he even knew anyone else was there, even when they stood right in front of him. 

Jongho kept close to his side during that time, calmly trying to get Yeosang to eat. Holding back his own tears. Because what else could he do? He was all Yeosang had left in this world. The only constant in a world crumbling to ashes.

They grew up in that bunker.

The first few years had been hard on everyone. Before they all learned to live together. Before they started to let go of the anguish and fear the war had brought them. Yeosang had been filled with grief for a long time, reluctant to move on in a world that seemed so hopeless, but slowly learning to move on. He remembers taking comfort in the few books that had found their way down into the bunker. Remembers running through the twisting hallways, exploring the large subterranean shelter with Jongho. Getting to know the layout of it. Discovering places they weren’t allowed to go. Locked rooms that needed passcards and codes. Rooms they never got to see the insides of.  


He was thirteen when he learned why his parents didn’t join them that night. Thirteen years old and devastated. 

Yeosang had gotten into a fight with a few older kids. He can’t remember why they were fighting, all he knew was that he was losing. It was more them bullying him and he trying to defend himself than fighting really. Jongho had found them though. Like he always did. It was like he had some sixth sense when it came to Yeosang being in trouble. Always showing up to save him. Something the older kids had realized too and for some reason they seemed to be scared to actually fight the younger. That day though they hadn’t run away as soon as Jongho showed up. They had backed off sure, after pushing Yeosang to the floor, but they had stayed. They had never been nice to him, but this time they had been unusually keen on hurting him. Throwing hurtful words in his direction while Jongho sneered at them.  


“Jongho won’t always be there to save you, Kang. One day he’ll leave you behind, just like his parents left yours. Why don’t you ask the Chois why you’re here and not your parents hmm? You’re useless to this shelter. Just like they were and that’s why they were left behind to die!”  


They had quickly disappeared after that. Leaving Yeosang on the floor with a busted lip. Jongho was kneeling beside him, arms wrapped tightly around him in a comforting hug.  


“We should go back”, he had whispered, coaxing Yeosang to his feet and guiding him back to their shared room.  


The older kids words hadn’t left his head though. Bringing forth his own insecurities and questions about the night he had left home. Why had they left them there? They could easily have joined them. So why didn’t they? His thoughts had been so loud, weighing on him for days before he finally cracked. He had to know. Needed to know why.  


They had been sitting around the small round table in their room. Eating the mush the shelter offered as food when he finally asked. The question had left him quietly, almost inaudible, making him having to repeat it when Jongho’s mom asked him what he had said. He remembers his uncle carefully placing down his utensils, folding his hands in front if him with a soft sigh before he told them. Yeosang remembers that dinner clearly. He had been sitting between Jongho and his mom. Jongho had grabbed his hand as his father started talking. Telling them about the reason for the bunkers existence. It had been built by the government long before the war even started. They had, to some degree, known what was going to happen. The underground structure had been built to save people. That much was true. What no one had told them before though was that it had been constructed to protect their nation from extinction. It couldn’t save everyone. It was never meant to save everyone. The only ones who knew of its existence were the ones the government felt crucial to save. The essential people to continue on the human race. Top scientists, engineers, farmers, doctors. The young and the healthy. Their closest families had of course been invited to stay too. To make sure those people would join.  


His parents hadn’t made the cut.  


They weren’t even supposed to know of its existence. And they hadn’t. Not until that fateful night when Yeosang was ripped from their home. His uncle had showed up in the middle of the night telling them everything. Promising to take care of Yeosang. To raise him as his own. Yeosang wasn’t supposed to be there. Not really. Jongho’s parents had lied to get him in. Lied about him losing his parents in the early stages of the war and that they were all he had left. That they couldn’t just leave him out to die. Alone and scared. No one had known his parents had been alive until Yeosang broke down when the news of the surface hit.  


With the revelation came a shift in him. He had left the table that night. Running through the corridors until he found a place to hide. To be alone. Yeosang had always been a sensitive kid, but the anger he felt after that closed him off. Turned him resentful against his parents that knowingly had promised him something impossible, against his uncle for leaving his parents to die. At the world. Finding out his parents weren’t allowed to join them, that they had been seen as unimportant, expendable, killed something in him. Made him distrustful and hostile. Always rearing for a fight.  


It took a long time before he forgave his uncle. Even longer before he learned to trust him again.  


Yeosang was fourteen when they started training them.  


Their leaders had implemented a system in the bunker. It divided the citizens of it into different blocks their very first day there. Depending on what profession they had. It was like something out of an dystopian novel, but it seemed to work. For the most part.  


The education of the youth in the bunker had started as soon as everything had calmed down. They were taught in different fields, testing out where they would fit in the best. Dividing them into groups based on their strengths and interests. Yeosang had been signed up for combat training and survival classes by his uncle. The sole reason being that it would help him direct his anger into something productive. Something useful. He had hated him for it. He had hated him for it. Until he realized it gave him something else to focus on. For a moment he forgot about his grief, his resentment and he threw himself wholeheartedly into the training after that. Excelling in it. He remembers spending hours in the training room battling invisible enemies. Remembers sparring with Jongho until they were so tired they could barely stand. Jongho was the stronger of the two. The more muscular one and getting punched by him always hurt. Yeosang, though, was faster, more agile. Skillfully dodging jabs and ducking in close to someone. Using others momentums against them rather than brute force. The results of their aptitude tests didn’t surprise anyone. They were assigned to the guard unit.  


Yeosang was nineteen when he heard they were sending people to the surface for the first time in nine years.


	2. A bleak future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: mentions of suicide and death. Nothing to graphic but yeah.

The sun was merciless as it blazed down on the remnants of what once used to be a thriving city. A city that had become unrecognizable from the destruction that had befallen upon it during the war, streets that once had been bustling with people and life had become silent, abandoned. The infrastructure had caved in on itself with buildings leaning precariously against each other, unable to stand up on their own anymore. Some no more than big piles of debris left on the ground, their metal skeletons bare for the world to see.

Yeosang was one of the few that got to see it all. The bleak world on the surface. At least parts of it. Surrounding the city were high walls, walls that somehow had survived the attempted eradication of the human race - by the human race.

The only time someone ever ventured above ground was for patrol duy. A duty that many of the remaining citizens in the underground shelter feared, but the leaders had proclaimed a necessity. That there, against all odds, might be other survivors out there. To keep an eye out for signs of life. Anything that could mean that they one day would be able to leave the sprawling underground structure they called home. Their fears weren't unfounded though. Their first few attempts at sending people to the surface had ended up being disastrous. They had lost too many people to the Blight. The air still too toxic to breathe even if it had been almost a decade since the war ended. And as if that wasn't enough of a deterrent the dangerous storms that ravaged the surface - unpredictable and lethal - sure was. Between that there were few idiotic - or brave enough depending on how you looked at it - to volunteer for that dreaded task, and often tried to change out of it with someone more willing. Yeosang was not one of them, all too eager to trade guarding the corridors of the shelter with patrolling the abandoned streets above.

It was eerily serene on the surface. Two words that shouldn't fit so well together, but they perfectly described the atmosphere. No one Yeosang knew agreed with him, not even Jongho. Most people found it horrifying, an appalling reminder of humanity's cruelest qualities, of what the world had become. What it had been. What they had lost. A reminder of what the war had done. Like living every day underground didn't do exactly that. To Yeosang, though, it was a place to be alone. To have some time to sort through his own thoughts and feelings without being disturbed. Finding alone time down in the shelter was damn near impossible.

They were only a fraction of the population the world had once held, but they were too many. Too many for a too small space. They had overlived its capacity a long time ago. They hadn't planned on staying down there more than a few years, certrainly not for fifteen years, and it was slowly starting to show. Little by little, but soon everything would come crashing down around them. Yeosang knew it. He had heard the whispers. Too many mouths to feed. Their overpopulation showed in the smaller food rations they were given. Less and less each passing year. The life support system couldn't sustain their growing numbers, Jongho's dad had once told them. Quietly voicing his concerns in their shared quarters. He wasn't sure how long they had left before it wouldn't be enough, but it would be soon. Jongho's mom had equally silently chimed in that their medical supplies were running scarily low. 

That's why Yeosang preferred the surface. It was his escape from the inevitable. They said they were the lucky few who had survived the apocalypse. If you could call them that. Lucky. Yeosang sure didn't think they were. He wasn't scared of dying. It was the circle of life. Everyone died sooner or later. There was a difference though, between dying of old age and starving to death. Between dying from natural causes and suffocating because the air was getting thinner and thinner. Sooner sure seemed more likely for them at this point. Lucky. What a fucking joke. On the surface he could hope, just for a moment, that there were life beyond the crumbling walls. Somewhere. That there was hope for them.

Patrol duty wasn't fun. Not by any means. Don't get him wrong, Yeosang loved being on them, but it wasn't fun. After the first year there wasn't anything new to explore. Nothing exciting to find. He felt as if he had gone through every abandoned car, explored every building, walked every street. Logically he knew he hadn't, but it sure felt like it. It was all the same after a while. There were a few places he hadn't been. The outer bounds of the city, near the barriers. They were not supposed to go there. Urged to stay close to the city center, to the entrance of the shelter. Where it was safe. 

Yeosang raised one hand to shield his eyes from the burning glare of the sun, curiously staring off towards the horizon where he could see it, the wall. Slowly eroding away out of disrepair. The harsh weather the surface had been ravaged with the last few years hadn't done it any favors. He had never ventured close enough to the barrier wall to know the true condition of it, but he knew of a few who had. They had never been the same again. Whatever they had witnessed must have been bad. They had all secluded themself after that. Not talking to anyone, and if they by all odds actually opened their mouths to speak they didn't make much sense.

All of them had ended up dead. One after the other.

He had also known a person or two that had left the city, never to be seen again. No one who did ever came back alive. At least that was what they were told. 

There were some contradictions in the tales shared around in the bunker though. They were told there were no life on the surface. That the Blight had killed everything living. Every human, every animal and every plant. Everything. Yet they were supposed to keep an eye out for survivors. There were rumors about mutated beasts roaming outside the city walls, that that was the real reason they were patrolling the desolate streets. Something the higher ups never denied, but they never confirmed it either. There were so many horror stories about what was beyond those mysterious walls. All told to the kids in the shelter to deter them from ever wanting to leave their sanctuary. All it made Yeosang was more curious. Curious about what it was that drove all those people to taking their own lives,curious to see if there actually was life beyond it the barrier or if it was just as desolate and devoid of life as the city he had become accustomed to.

If there was something out there, he wanted to know. Needed to know. Even if it just was mutated beast and nothing else.

A small sigh left his lips, it sounded distorted behind the gasmask covering his face. A necessity to wear as soon as you stepped a foot out of the shelter. The toxins in the air wouldn't kill you right away, but only a small amount could be deadly. It would start out as hallucinations. Seeing things that weren't there, hearing things no one else could. With continued exposure and without immediate medical care you would slowly start to choke to death as your lungs filled up with blood. Drowning you. A death he didn't wish on anyone. Yet sometimes Yeosang entertained the idea of just ripping the mask of his own face to breathe the open air for the first time in forever. Sometimes he thought it would be worth it. He'd rather die on his own terms than slowly waste away underground. Like they were doing now. Just waiting to die without hope.

Like it read his mind, the comm crackled to life. The sound grating in his ear, making him wince.

"Are you still alive?"

Jongho. Always Jongho. Somehow he always knew. 

"I'm fine". His voice was scratchy from disuse. Mouth dry.

"You should head back soon," Jongho advised. He must have been gone hours for Jongho to call him up, knowing Yeosang preferred his solitude. "I checked the log. You should've been back over an hour ago, Sangie. You know stay-"

"I'm fine", Yeosang repeated, cutting Jongho off mid-sentence. Knowing what he was going to say. They were all worried when he was out on patrol, especially when he didn't come back in time. He didn't blame them.

Straying too far from the shelter was never a good idea. The dry heat on the surface was a far cry from the mild temperatures - bordering on too cold - down in the bunker. Being under the scorching sun and not being able to eat or drink easily was a recipe for dehydration, and if you were extra unlucky you could get caught out in one of _the_ storms. There was no way of knowing when the next one was going to hit before it was almost upon you, and being stuck out in one was more or less a death sentence. It had happened to him once. That's why Jongho always made sure to check up on him, constantly reminding him to get back on time. To stay close.

It had been little over a year since it happened. The patrol duty on the surface had still been new to him. They had told them to keep close, but Yeosang had conveniently forgot that part. 

The storm clouds had rolled in faster than he could get back to the entrance of the bunker. The warning over the comm had reached him too late. Just right before they cut out all together. Rendered useless by the harsh winds and heavy rain. He had been forced to seek shelter elsewhere and had found himself hiding away, curled up in a small nook in the basement of a collapsed building.

The storm was nothing like one he had ever experienced before. The previously bright day had turned almost as dark as a cloudy night in a matter of minutes. The winds sharp and piercing as they whipped the rain against his small shelter, making debris fall around him, water finding its way through every little crevice in the cracked cement. Drenching him. Burning him.

It had felt like days before it stopped. Before he had been able to painfully crawl out from his cover.

There had been no way for him to contact the bunker, no way for them to know if he had survived the ordeal or not. No rescue. Yeosang had been forced to make his way back alone and hurting. They had all believed he had died that day. Like everyone else had that had been caught out in one of the storms. No one had ever come back. No one but Yeosang. He had stumbled in several hours later, to everyones amazement and shock. Collapsing as soon as the door had closed behind him. Hardly breathing and with blisters covering his exposed skin.

They later told him that the filters on his mask had been clogged up with black goo. That it was surprising he had been able to breathe at all. 

He spent a week in the medbay. Jongho worriedly hovering over him the whole time. It hadn't stopped him from volunteering for the next surface shift as soon as he was cleared for duty though.

"If you're sure..." Jongho's voice brought him back from his wandering thoughts and the memories of that day.

"I am".

"Well don't stay out for too long okay? Your shift is long over. Youngjae left a while ago to take over for you so no need to stay out longer than necessary". Jongho sounded tired and he briefly wondered what had happened down in the bunker to make him sound so worn out. 

"I'll be back soon. Don't worry".

Something that, unfortunately, would turn out to be a lie.


End file.
